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Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

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Occupation
  
writer

Name
  
Jennifer Makumbi

Nationality
  
Ugandan

Role
  
Novelist


Alma mater
  
Genre
  
Fiction

Books
  
Kintu

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Commonwealth short story prize goes to 39risktaking

Jennifer nansubuga makumbi acceptance speech at the 2014 commonwealth writers short story prize


Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan novelist and short story writer. Her doctoral novel, The Kintu Saga, was shortlisted and won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013. It was published by Kwani Trust in 2014 under the title Kintu. She was shortlisted for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for her story "Let's Tell This Story Properly", and emerged Regional Winner, Africa region. She was the Overall Winner of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She was longlisted for the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature. She is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. She lives in Manchester with her husband, Damian, and son, Jordan.

Contents

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Uganda39s Makumbi wins Club prize Magazine

Audience q a with jennifer nansubuga makumbi writivism festival kampala


Early life and education

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi39s 39Kintu39 Made Me Want to Tell

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi was born and grew up in Kampala, Uganda. She is the eldest child of Anthony Kizito Makumbi and the third of Evelyn Nnakalembe. Her parents separated when she was two years old and for two years she lived with her grandfather Elieza Makumbi. During Idi Amin's regime, her father, a banker, was arrested and brutalised. While he was saved from being killed, he suffered from mental health issues for rest of his life. Makumbi was brought up by her aunt, Catherine Makumbi-Kulubya. She lived with her family first at Nakasero, then later at Kololo.

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Folklore tells us so much

She went to Trinity College Nabbingo for O-levels and to King's College Budo for A-levels. She did a B.A. degree in Education, majoring in teaching English and Literature in English at the Islamic University in Uganda, where she edited the university magazine, The IUIU Mirror. Makumbi first taught at Nakasero High, an A-level school, then for eight years taught at Hillside High School, an international school in Uganda.

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi wwwafricanwritingcomeightimagesjennifermakum

At that time she wrote another play, Sitaani Teyebase, in Luganda for an inter-zone competition. This play won the competition and toured many of the SDA churches within Kampala.

In September 2001 she joined Manchester Metropolitan University to do an MA in Creative Writing. She completed a PhD in Creative writing at Lancaster University. Makumbi has taught at various universities in the UK teaching both English and Creative Writing as an Associate Lecturer.

Her writing relies heavily on Ganda oral traditions, especially myths, legends, folktales and sayings.

Writing

Makumbi started writing at 15 when she wrote, directed and produced a play for a school competition. It came in third. She wrote another play when she was 18 and it too came third. While in Senior 3 she wrote her first play for an inter-house competition, which came third. She wrote her second play again for an inter-house competition at A-level, and once again the play came third. Both of these plays were written in English. In 1994, she started writing a diary in poetry form to expunge her feelings as she was going through a rough patch in her life. She wrote more than 50 poems but never bothered to share them with the public. She started writing prose in 1998 while she was teaching in Kampala.

Makumbi's writing is largely based on oral traditions. She realised that oral traditions were so broad and would be able to frame all her writing regardless of subject, form or genre. She has said she "noticed that using oral forms which were normally perceived as trite and 'tired' brought, ironically, a certain depth to a piece that I could not explain." It is important to note that her intentions in using oral traditions in fiction are not conservationist as is often presumed in African writing. She draws on oral forms because they anchor her writing in Ganda culture. At the same time, because these oral forms are rooted in her first language, she is confident using them.

Her work has been published by African Writing Online and Commonword. She also runs the African reading group ARG! in Manchester, which focuses on obscure African writers. In 2012, her short story "The Accidental Seaman" was published in Moss Side Stories by Crocus Books. In 2013, her poems "Free Range" and "Father cried in the kitchen" were published in Sweet Tongues.

She won the Kwani? Manuscript Project, a new literary prize for unpublished fiction by African writers, and was shortlisted for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize alongside two other African contenders (Adelehin Ijasan from Nigeria and Michelle Sacks from South Africa), going on to become the overall winner with her entry "Let's Tell This Story Properly".

Novels

  • Kintu. Kwani Trust, Nairobi. 2014. ISBN 978-9966-1598-9-2. 
  • Short stories

  • "Let’s Tell This Story Properly", in Granta, 2014
  • "The Joys of Fatherhood", in African Writing Online
  • "The accidental sea man", in Moss Side Stories, 2012
  • Awards and honours

  • Longlisted for the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature
  • Overall Winner of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize
  • Winner of the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013
  • Shortlisted for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize
  • Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014 regional winner, Africa
  • References

    Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Wikipedia


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